


Mello's Life

by HoshisamaValmor (HannibalCatharsis)



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 09:55:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16406195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HannibalCatharsis/pseuds/HoshisamaValmor
Summary: A series of moments and the people that affected Mello throughout his life. This fic has been fully rewritten in 2018, so now it can be properly read.





	Mello's Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was my first fic. I never uploaded it to ao3 because I never intended to rewrite it and its original format was awful. However, I kept it online on ffnet and said I wouldn't rewrite it for nostalgic purposes. It was done and updated at a very important time of my life, and the chapters were written and updated on the actual parallel dates of November 11th 2009, January 26 and 28th 2010.
> 
> However, it kept getting more and more views throughout these past 9 years despite the poor quality. So eventually I decided I would rewrite the whole thing and the keep the original version, with all its nostalgic value to me, will be saved for myself.
> 
> Since this is now hopefully a lot better than the first awkward fic of a 16 year old's fanfic, I decided to post it here as well.
> 
> Disclaimer: You guessed it, I still don't own Death Note and I still haven't made any money out of Death Note stuff.

_**.** _

_**Chapter 1** _

_**Quillsh Wammy** _

_**.** _

_December 29th, 1994_

"Your name is Mello now."

Such a simple phrase. Something any child would remember, whether or not they understood the reason behind it.

Mihael Keehl. Born on December 13th, 1989. Blood type A. Mother, father and younger brother deceased in a car accident on the night of December 24th. Another heart-wretching, tragic orphan, not unlike so many of Wammy's children - too many.

Quillsh Wammy watched the small blond child as he sat in the airplane, broken arm wrapped in plaster and a strip of bandages covering his head. Although he had clearly been hurt, the relatively minor injuries betrayed the seriousness of the accident that had caused them; Quillsh had seen the chilling pictures. A black rosary, slightly too long for him, dangled around his neck, the cross almost falling over his lap. His good hand touched it occasionally, clearly without him even noticing. A very beautiful child, his long hair made him look caracteristically androgynous. He reminded the old man of a little wounded bird.

The whole process had been remarkably swift, and all the necessary documents had been filled and approved. The transition between the newly formed municipality of Ljubljana and the Slovenian Child Services took less than a day, and both parties had granted each other the personal information and documentation required for the orphan to be safetly transported and settled in a renowned orphanage in Winchester, England. The opportunity of a lifetime. It were some of the benefits of a philanthropic life's work - and undoubtefully, of a considerable amount of funds - to help hasten the process. Quillsh's visit to Slovenia had been a short one, and already lengthened past due to make sure the child's was legally and properly transfered.

Although there had been talks of assigning a social worker to accompany the child and act as translator, it was scrapped due to lack of personel and to Quillsh's relative fluency in the language. And after all, the boy would move to a new country with a new language. And a whole new identity. The transition might be harsher, but hopefully more effective this way.

"Have you ever traveled, Mello?" Quillsh asked. His accent had been awkwardly clear through his rusty Slovenian, but perfectly understandable. Now, however, he chose to speak in English. "I quite like it. Seeing the city grow smaller and smaller, watching the blue sky and the clouds. It's lovely."

" _Why did you say my name is Mello now?_ " The boy spoke in Slovenian without taking his eyes from the airplane's window. Quillsh's lips moved to a faint smile, a reassuring gesture even if the child wasn't willing to see it.

"I know you can speak English. What about we try it a bit? How did you learn it?"

" _You haven't answered me."_

"Because when we get to your new home, in England, you will meet your new friends and you need your new name."

_"I don't like it. My name is Mihael. I like my name."_

"Your name is very beautiful. That's why it's so important. Important things need to be treasured, and safe. Your name is yours alone, as is everything that happened to you until this moment, Mello. It's yours alone."

The words made him turn his eyes to the old man at last, fingers clenching unconsciously around the cross of the rosary. Was he religious? There had been no particular mention in any file. Something to take note of.

_"What..."_

"You haven't answered my question either," Quillsh interrupted. "Can you tell me how you learned English?"

Under a veil of suspition on his face, the boy shrugged. It was more casualness over arrogance.

"I learned to read in Slovenian too fast. I got bored and started another language."

"How many languages would you say you feel comfortable with? How fluent would you consider yourself in them?"

"Four. Five. I don't speak them often, I just understand."

As a five year old child, the slight accent in the words was not only excusable, it was commendable. Not to mention what he had just said. But it was not something that took Quillsh by surprise; he had seen the few, but enough hospital reports where the soon-to-be-replaced-name featured. Most had been signed by a nurse of the Ljubljana University Medical Centre, a woman whom accompained and treated not only the domestic violence injuries some of the Keehl family members displayed too often, but also tracked down and documented (perhaps illegally) how the oldest child's intelligence was way beyond his age. It had been this nurse who managed to contact Quillsh Wammy in hopes he could take care of the boy, even prior to the accident, as the Child Services had yet to be effective in securing the children's wellbeing. By the time Quillsh had been informed this Wammy's House candidate was now orphaned, it had set any doubts and concerns away.

"You are a very special child, Mello. You've learned and survived through so much. That's why we are taking you to a home where everything will work out for your benefit. You will learn much more, you'll make friends. You'll be happy there, as Mello. Your past stays here."

"I don't believe you."

The old man breathed out, the weight of his years suddenly a bit heavier than before. It is never easy, having to explain to a young child how their whole lives will be radically different from everything they've ever known.

"Why me?" he threw at Quillsh. "Why pick me, of everyone else?"

"Not everyone else is like you."

"I'm not special. I'm-"

"You are five years old and you are speaking to me in a foreign language as if you were a young man. You speak five languages..."

"I  _understand_ -"

"And you taught yourself to read and write in them."

"I didn't!" Mello shouted, his body almost jumping forward before he cowered around himself and threw himself back to the seat, flinching from possible dull pain and fist firmly shut around the cross of the crucifix. "I'm not special. I didn't do anything. You're wrong, you're lying and I don't believe you."

"The report on your father's admition to the hospital earlier this year stated that he had a severe gastritis." Quillsh slowed down to take special attention to Mello's reactions, the way his pupils dilated and his lips pressed together for a second. "The cause appointed was excessive use of anti-inflammatories mixed with alcohol. Those were your mother's prescription, not your father's, and he had no reason to take such a high dosage, much less swallow them down with alcohol. I would believe your mother might have done it, had she not been hospitalized at the time."

"I didn't do anything," he replied immediately, pulling his arm closer to his chest and averting his eyes to the window. Genius or not, Mello  _was_  a five year old child. The most important point to Quillsh was not exactly if he was guilty or not; rather, that he had done it to begin with. He might have seen his mother taking the pills and memorized the dosage, or he might have picked it up and read it himself. Not to mention he had to plan the whole thing. At the age of four.

"You are special, Mello. Who you are, who you have been until this point,  _is_  important. But that does not define you. Your new home, your new friends-"

"I don't want friends."

"-those are what will define you. You..."

"I don't want to go with you! I want my mom!"

"Your mother is dead." The words were harsh, too harsh. He knew it, but he pressed on despite how Mello cowered immediately. "Your father is dead, your brother is dead. They're gone. There will never be more screams and no more laughs, no more joy and no more pain. You're no longer the kind older brother, the protective son who could not stop what was happening around you, or the abused child who was just never good enough. It's gone and it will never come back, Mello."

The sight of the child's eyes watering clenched a merciless fist around Quillsh's heart. No matter how many years and how many orphans and neglected children he took under his wing, the image of a child suffering is never one anyone gets used to.

"Do you understand now, why your name and your past are so important? They can be used to harm you, to make you sad. Important things need to be protected. Is there better protection than living in your memory alone? They're gone from everywhere else. You are much more than just that. You are Mello. Your other name lives inside you, but he is gone from the world."

The child hid his eyes behind the bangs, an useless attempt to mask the fact tears were streaming down his cheeks. Soon enough, he was sobbing and gasping for air, his good hand rubbing and drying his eyes and face to no avail, but he didn't voice any other complains.

The old man forced himself to witness the effect his words had had, his heart clenching just past the point of physical pain as the child kept sobbing. This was never easy. Some might see it as a necessary evil. Others, arguably as brainwashing. Quillsh had to see it as a necessary evil. The children needed to sever their bonds in order to move forward and to be safe in their new lives.

Safe, in case they managed to reach the ultimate goal of becoming the greatest detective in the world.

 

 

He didn't like it. He hated it. His bed, the dormitories, the kids, the orphanage, the weather, the cold, the pain. And his name.

By the night of the 31st, he sat lone in the dormitory after sneaking away from the crowd of children forcefully gathered around for the New Year's Eve. To anyone who might have seen him, sitting on the edge of the bed holding the cross of the black rosary, they might have thought he was praying. That seemed to be people's reaction at seeing his rosary, understandably assuming he was religious. But he couldn't care for religion. Not anymore. He understood why people did it and why, though. The thought of trying seemed pushing his luck too much, though.

The rosary hanged dangling, so he reached his hand to it and clenched a fist around it to make it stop.

That was a very vivid memory. The dangling rosary on his father's rear-view mirror, shaking harshly with his parents' screams. Mihae- ...Mello had focused his attention on it to ignore the screams, and then focused harder when the world was upside down and there were no screams anymore. It kept swirling, dark beads gleaming, soft thuds of plastic and chain. But when he moved towards it, the pain in his arm had been so strong and so much he had screamed. He had called his mother, called his brother, his father didn't yell, and only the rosary kept swirwling softly with a constant winter breeze creeping through the broken windshield. He had stood very still, waiting for the beads to stop moving as well. When he wanted to hear screams, he only heard that, and it was just way more scary than anything else in the world.

They were all dead. Everyone, at the same time. Except him.

Why was  _he_  special?

Helpless tears gathered immediately in his eyes and he sniffed at their first threat of falling. Like usual, it was useless.

He managed to see a moving shadow through the tears, and as he looked up, he saw a girl standing in the corridor. The sudden witness made my jump and he immediately started to rub his eyes.

"Hi," she said softly. She waited until he had stopped scrubbing the tears away and pretend everything was alright. "My name is Linda. Is everything alright?"

She spoke the words slowly, in an exaggerated manner that immediately told him she thought Mello didn't understand her clearly.

"I can speak English."

She visibly flinched. Even in the dark, Mello could almost see how her cheeks blushed into beet red.

"Oops. Sorry! I didn't mean to sound..." She pressed her hands together, fingers twitching uncomfortably. "I'm sorry. There's just so many children from so many places, and well, you really didn't look quite British, so I thought you might not understand me. I've seen you before. Well, these past days. Huh... You get what I mean."

"There's no problem," Mello reassured her for some reason. He was about to ask her what she was doing here and why she wasn't with the other children, or perhaps why she was in the boys' part of the dormitory to begin with, but she spoke before him.

"Your name is Mello, right?"

He frowned at the word. Truth be told, the sound was somewhat similar... it started with the same letter, it rolled in the tongue like his real name, but... it wasn't.

Still, Mello shrugged. "He told me it is."

Linda picked up on his reference immediately: "Watari? He was the one who picked me up too," she told him with a reassuring smile. "I like him. He's very nice."

Mello's frown sunk deeper. He sniffed a trace of snot his previous bit of tantrum had left behind. He didn't really think Watari was that nice. He had been mean, just downright harsh, as if Mello was stupid, as if he wouldn't know his family was dead, as if he hadn't been there to...

His vision watered immediately again. He pinched the rosary so hard he thought he had teared the skin of his palm open. He tried to hide his face, but obviously, just like with Watari, just like with his mother or his father, even with his little brother, it did absolutely nothing to hide his tears whatsoever.

"Hey." Linda's voice called him before the warmth of her hand landed on his shoulder. Mello shrinked a bit at the touch. "It's all right. I know it's sad. It hurts, but one day it won't."

She called him again, encouraging him to look up and waiting patiently to do so.

"You're not alone here. Do you know that? There's many people here who are hurting too. It's all right to show that to them."

"I don't want anyone," he said, not caring to put much sense into the words other than that. It summed it up pretty well.

"Being alone in here is not going to help. Everyone's down there. Don't you want to see the fireworks?"

"No."

"Are you scared?"

"No!" he replied immediately. "I just don't want to."

"I'm a bit scared," Linda admitted. "That's why I was wandering around, to get courage. It takes me some time to get brave. Could you come with me?"

Mello sniffed harshly again. He looked up to Linda a couple of times, trying to fight against the need to lie down and sleep. Instead, he ended up relunctly sliding off the bed.

Linda's smile was so wide it actually surprised him.

"Thank you so much. Let's go then!"

She picked his hand and guided him through the corridor. If she really was scared before, he would never had guessed it by the way she seemed so eager to go outside. They reached the hall he had previous fled from, filled with the strange and unknown children and caretakers, their faces turned upwards to the dark sky. He mirrored them on instinct, but there was nothing to be seen yet.

"Hold my head, ok?" Linda asked. "The sound scares me a lot, but I like the colors, so..."

"Your name is Linda?" he asked, turning his face to her when they stopped at a place she had decided for them. "Your real name?"

"It's my name now," she said with a reassuring smile. "I like it. It's pretty. Do you know what it means? It means actually does mean 'pretty'. Your name is quite cool too."

Mello shook his head.

"This name doesn't have any meaning."

"Of course it does." Mello looked suspiciously at her. She got the cue and added. "I mean it! You can check it. I think it suits you."

Confused and still not fully believing her, Mello turned up to the sky just as a firework exploded bright and wide in yellow and green lights through the sky.

For those few seconds, it was as if nothing in the world had changed. The colors and explosions blinded and deafened sadness away and gave place to blessed bewilderment. The children cried and cheered down below.

When it ended, Linda was still holding his hand good hand.

She became his first friend in Wammy's House.

.

to be continued

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Typed to Deviloof album 'Devil's Proof'.
> 
> Thank you for reading.


End file.
